I assure you that Jonathan and I remain the best of friends. There is plenty of time for us to plan a future together (if that is what God wills for us) when I return home at the end of the term.
I remain your grateful and loving daughter,
Emily
September 27, 1931
Dear Jonathan,
I am very disappointed in both you and myself. Because of you, I have wrongly accused my blameless sister of an indiscretion. I did not dream that you would be so bold as to tell my parents the contents of the letter that I wrote to you regarding the weaknesses of certain inhabitants of this region, and I certainly did not expect you to reveal to them the personal conversations that you and I have had regarding marriage. I am not my mother, and even if she is in love with you, I am not. I am fond of you, certainly, but I have never declared any affection for you other than that of a friend. Now you, by your excessive boldness, have instigated a campaign by my parents to force me to return to Chicago. I have no intentions of doing so. The school year is already well underway, and I have every expectation of completing it. Whether or not I return to Chicago at the end of the term is entirely between God Almighty and me.
Now, please refrain from appealing to my mother to induce me to come running to you. I am not a child, and I am not under my mother’s thumb, nor my father’s.
Sincerely,
Emily Weston
September 28, 1931
My School Journal, grade 7, Miss Weston’s class
By Pearl Wallace
My name is Pearl because my mama has named all her children after the precious stones to be found in the Throne of God. We are Jasper, Sardius, Pearl, Beryl, and Ruby. By all rights, Ruby was supposed to be named “Carbuncle,” because they did not call it a ruby in the Bible, at least not when they were talking about the Throne of God. I am glad she fudged a little. Ruby would have a hard time living down “Carbuncle.” The young’uns at school can be mean sometimes. The grownups around here can be mean, also. A lot of them call Sardius “Sardine,” and it makes him mad. He does not show it, though, because he is bashful and he does not want anybody to know it hurts his feelings.
I had an older brother named Harrison, who was the firstborn, but he died when he was two years old of the whooping cough. It was after that Mama started in naming us after the jewels in the Throne of God, because she said if the Lord regarded her babies as precious as His Own Throne, then maybe He would look after them a little more diligently.
September 28, 1931. Daddy came home last night. I did not hear him, which means he had already sobered up some by the time he got here. When I got up, he was sitting at the kitchen table, looking like something that had crawled out from under a rock, but he was nice enough. Mama did not speak to him while she was cooking breakfast, but when he mentioned that he had the automobile working and that we should all go across the river and pick muscadines over at Big Sonny Dailey’s place, she sweetened up a little. After breakfast, we all piled in, and off we went! It ended up being a good day, but I wish Darlene could have come with us. We have so much more fun when she is along.
Tomorrow we have to get in the rest of the potatoes, cantaloupes, and the squash. There is a lot of work yet to be done. Good night! I will sleep well tonight! Beryl and Ruby are already asleep.
September 29, 1931. We spent the day picking in the fields, even though we are in the waning moon. We just did not get everything in while the signs were right, but Mama says that should not matter because we are canning everything we pick, so we don’t have to worry about things keeping. It is a good thing we have plenty of jars and lids now, as we are canning like crazy.
I wish we could go back to school. I am hoping that when we get back, Miss Weston might have a shipment of new books from her friends up in Chicago. She has started a library, so we can borrow books any time we want. Reading is as much fun as fishing, playing in the creek, or climbing trees. In the summertime, sometimes I climb up in the big sycamore down by the creek and curl up in the crook with a book for the whole afternoon.
I learned to read when I was four years old. My mama started me out early on with the Appleton School Reader, and I took to it like a duck takes to water. By the time I was in the third grade I was reading from the Bible, and for fun I read The Story of Mankind, the Voyages of Dr. Doolittle, and just about anything I can get my hands on. This summer Mama said I was getting good enough at reading to try my hand at Shakespeare because I already could read from the Psalms and Song of Solomon, which Shakespeare helped to translate from back when King James was the King of England. King James was a good king because he was actually Scottish, which means he came from a better class of people than the English. He was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.
I wanted to read Titus Andronicus because I heard it was very gory, with a bad man who grinds up the bones of his rival’s children and bakes them up into bread, but Mama said that was not appropriate for a young lady, and so I read As You Like It instead. She and I sat down every day and read one scene together. I read a little of it out loud and she would tell me what it meant, then I would go back and read it again, and it would make sense to me. I liked it, except for the part that says that only the oldest son can inherit from his daddy, and that everyone else gets left out in the cold.
My own daddy and his younger brother Woodrow got left out in the cold because their daddy believed that very thing and left most of his land and his money to his oldest son, my uncle James, who sold it all off and then packed up and moved to Texas.
Sometimes it just burns me up that people think that the oldest boy is the best and the rest of us are just worthless. When I grow up, I am going to treat all my children the same. I may even treat my girls better because boys can do more and they can get better jobs while girls usually end up just being somebody’s wife. If her husband turns out to be a sorry drunk, she is left to try to feed her young’uns on berries and trout.
Cooling, waning days, darkening nights,
I taste the weariness of my upright children.
The young ones feel age in their veins.
The babe lies heavy and weak in the womb.
I wait for the light to drain into darkness,
For the ebbing.
October
October 1, 1931. Daddy is not always bad. He can be kind and fun, but sometimes, he is very sad because he does not know how to be happy with what life has handed him. I think it was Big Daddy Wallace’s fault. He made Daddy think that money is everything, so now he does not know how to get along without it.
Big Daddy had been a wealthy man until the Panic of 1907, and to be honest, his boys grew up spoiled. When times got hard, Big Daddy Wallace fooled around trying to keep up appearances, sending his boys off to a fancy boarding school, and then to college, until he went broke. Daddy went to Maryville College for one semester, but then, things got so bad that Big Daddy had to lay off all the workers, and then he had an apoplexy, so he had to call the boys home to do the heavy work. That did not work out by a long shot. Daddy says that the Wallace boys were meant to be poets, not workhands, and of course, once they took over the farm, things went from bad to worse because they did not know any more about farming than Jack. Then, Big Daddy up and died and left about all he had to Uncle James, and the next thing you know, Uncle James has sold out and gone to Texas, Uncle Woodrow has gotten himself messed up in the war, and Daddy does not know what hit him. It was lucky that one of Big Daddy’s friends who was a big shot with the Railroad stepped in and got him a job. That worked out until the Depression hit and everybody went bust. Poor Daddy just feels like life has treated him bad, and he does not know how to buckle down and work to make things better.
October 3, 1931. The last two days have been hard. I am so tired I can hardly hold my eyes open, but things are looking up. Daddy swears he will not drink a drop until all the crops are in. The nice thing about Daddy is that once he promises to stay sober, he generally does, at least for a time, so we can count o
n him to put his hand in for the next little while. Mama says she, Daddy, and Jasper can handle it after this week, so the rest of us can go back to school. I am not sure about that. She is not looking like she is up for much more work. She gets out of breath just walking from the woodshed with a load of wood in her arms.
Beryl has finished her bath, so I am going to take mine now. It will feel good to sit in some hot water and soak out some of the tiredness out of my back.
October 4, 1931. Today is Sunday, my favorite day during harvest season because it is a day of rest. We get the whole day not doing any work at all.
At church today, we sang Just As I Am for the invitational, which is my favorite song when you do not sing it too slow. When you sing it fast, it makes you feel sweepy and swoopy, as if you are floating down the river, hitting little eddies, pausing for a minute, then sweeping fast again. That is how it sounds when Mama plays it, but Claire Fellows plays it too slow, which makes it feel like somebody died.
I think Miss Weston feels bad because nobody comes down to get saved, but we all were already saved and baptized before she came. Preacher Miller never has an invitational unless there is somebody new there that he thinks needs to come to Jesus. I like singing Just As I Am, but it would be worth it to give it up not to see Miss Weston’s hopes dashed every Sunday when no one walks down the aisle. She starts out looking hopeful, with her eyes searching over everyone’s faces, and with each verse, you can see the hope become more and more dim. By the time the song is over, she looks so beat and sad I want to cry for her. Sometimes I want to go running down the aisle and make up a story about how I never knew how much Jesus loved me until now just to give her a little encouragement, but that would be a lie, and she would see right through it.
After church, we went to my pap-pa’s house for Sunday dinner, but Miss Weston did not come because she has some letters to write. I missed her, but it was nice not to have to put on company manners while we were all so tired. After dinner, we sat around in the front room while Pap-pa whittled and told stories. Mama was so wore out she just sat in Mam-ma’s rocking chair the whole afternoon and laid her head back with her eyes closed. Miss Janey Jo took us all outside to look at the calves that Pap-pa will be taking to market in a few weeks.
Being out in the barn with the cows and their calves made me miss Mam-ma. She used to sing while she milked. She had a soft, wavery voice, kind of husky and breathy, and she could carry a tune perfectly. She always sang hymns, but sometimes she sang ballads from the old country where her mama was from. That would be Ulster, in Ireland. The ballads from Ireland are always both sad and lively. They were usually about somebody’s lover dying or running off to war, but the music was bouncy and happy. I never knew if I was supposed to feel happy or sad when I heard her sing, so I just let myself feel both. It is the same way I feel now whenever I think about her.
Miss Janey Jo is different. She is always happy and she sings happy songs about bluebirds and fancy ladies. Sometimes, she goes camping with us and fishing in the river.
Mama does not say so, but I know she does not much care for Miss Janey Jo. I can tell because she changes the subject every time one of us talks about how much we like her. I think she is mad because Pap-pa up and married her not seven months after he put Mam-ma in the ground, which Mama thinks was not decent. Miss Janey Jo also is young enough to be Pap-pa’s daughter. She is not but two years older than Mama. Mama does not think that is decent, either. She is nice about it though, so I do not know if Miss Janey Jo knows Mama is not fond of her.
For Mama’s sake, we tried not to like Miss Janey Jo at first. Beryl managed it for a while, but I just could not from the very beginning. She is the nicest lady you ever met, and sweet and kind to me just like Mam-ma was, but she is pretty and very much fun, which Mam-ma was not. Mam-ma was sickly for a long time before she died, and by the time she gave up the ghost, there was nothing to her but skin and bones. She did not even have much hair left, except for a few little wisps that she tied up in a little bitty knot on top of her head that was not hardly any bigger than a persimmon, but still I thought she was beautiful. She was partial to me and spoiled me, so it is natural that I would take to her.
Now I need to write something to turn in to Miss Weston tomorrow. I sure cannot turn in anything from most of what I have.
October 4, 1931,
Dearest Mother and Father,
This is one of those difficult weeks where nearly all the children have missed school because they are required in the fields to help bring in the harvest. I am constantly amazed at how hardworking and diligent they are. They do backbreaking work, and yet, they apply themselves assiduously to their schoolwork. Unlike some of the children I have seen at home, they understand how important an education is. If you could see them being so brave in the face of poverty, how unselfishly they contribute to their families, how respectful they are to me and to one another, you would be as proud of them as I am.
Yet, even though they work hard to make something of themselves, most of them face hardships that they will never be able to overcome. Their poverty means they will never get the kind of education they need to make a comfortable living, perhaps even a subsistence one. Most of them will be chained to this hardscrabble soil for the rest of their lives. If they are like their parents, they will continue to thirst for poetry and philosophy, holding to well-worn copies of the classics, reading everything they can get their hands on, taking the time to discuss deep topics among themselves. I am astonished at how literate some of them are, and how they yearn for intellectual society!
I long to do something to help them. If I cannot help the adults, I can help the children. The ones who are exceptionally bright and motivated deserve a chance to a good education. There is no high school in this community, so far away from any towns large enough to support one. That means once they complete the eighth grade, they are doomed to a life of labor, without the light of learning, without the opportunity to further study Scripture, philosophy, or any other subject.
Since I have a good bit of the legacy Grandfather left to me, and since I anticipate that I will be receiving additional income from Papa William’s estate when the time comes for him to depart this earth, I am thinking that I would like to establish a scholarship fund for the brightest and most motivated of these children to attend private boarding schools for high school. Would you be willing to help me? Would you consider helping me to fund such a scholarship? Would you be willing to lend your name to a request to your colleagues and friends for such?
Oh, Mother and Father! If only you could see these children! How beautiful, bright, and eager they are! How kind and deserving. Your heart would break to see their circumstances, to feel their poverty and understand their limited prospects. Please consider helping! If you were to give just a little, it could make such an enormous difference. If your friends and associates would give a little, it would mean the world to all of us.
Thank you, dear Parents, for listening to my plea, and thank you for considering helping me to help spread the light of education to these dear people.
Much love to you all,
Emily
Cooling, waning days.
A day of singing, the Spirit is pleased.
He presses His hand upon my banks as I grow restless.
The great Orb turns her face toward darkness,
Away from me; she loosens her grasp.
I hum under the palm of the Spirit,
Feeling my silver children shimmer beneath the willows.
October 5, 1931
My School Journal, grade 7, Miss Weston’s class
By Pearl Wallace
I love to read. I have been reading ever since I can remember. This summer I read a play by William Shakespeare, called As You Like It. My mother said I was ready for Shakespeare because I was so good at reading the Psalms. Shakespeare helped to translate part of the Psalms and Song of Solomon for the King James Version of the Bible. It is the only version that is ac
tually God-inspired, so it is the one we read. All the others bear false witness.
It was a very good play, which I enjoyed, although it was confusing, with many characters who pretend to be other characters. My mother helped me to sort it all out, though. I was happy to see that it ended well, with everyone getting married.
I liked one of the main characters, Rosalind, because she was smart and figured out what to do to make it turn out well. Shakespeare was wise enough to know that girls sometimes make the best heroes.
October 5, 1931. Hurrah! It rained today so we got to go to school and Mama got a day of rest. She is looking very worn out these days.
It also is nice to come home from school and not have to get right to work. We just played with Ruby, and then I ran over to see Darlene. We played jacks for a while, but then Billy Ray came in, and it felt funny to be there with him staring at me the way he does, so I came on home. I do not like Billy Ray one single bit. He is half-drunk most of the time, and he is mean all of the time. At least Daddy does not drink but every once in a while, and when he gets over it, he is nice again. Billy Ray is never nice.
It quit raining during supper. We all went out to sit on the porch to listen to Daddy play his banjo. Sometimes, when we sit out on the porch of an evening, Daddy does not enjoy himself, but he looks at the stars and gets a little bit blue, so we were all glad that Daddy seemed happy the whole evening long.
Daddy is a daydreamer. He thinks about things that no one else thinks about. One time, we were all sitting out on the porch after supper, and he just got up and stretched out in the yard, looking up at the sky. Presently, he called all of us to come out and lie down with him. It was a very clear night, and the stars were as bright as little candles in the sky, all lit up. Daddy pointed out some of the constellations, and he told us that some of those stars are so far away, we could not travel to them in a hundred years, even if we went a thousand miles an hour. It was the most amazing thing to think about. Imagine travelling hundreds of years in cold, cold space, heading toward a star! He looked up at those stars, and he recited a poem that goes like this.
In the Midst of Innocence Page 5